


Hunter Arcana

by puckity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Time, M/M, Post-Season/Series 12, Sibling Incest, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2017, Unrequited-ish Love, angst with a somewhat happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 03:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12785871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: Max supposed that he could probably skulk around when he needed to—when he made the effort—but he had only ever seen Sam long and broad and taking up space whether he wanted to or not. And a dump of a dive bar, even by hunter standards, off some county road just past Gillette, Wyoming on I-90 didn’t have all that much space to take up.





	Hunter Arcana

**Author's Note:**

> My first go at the hugely fun [2017 SPN Reverse Bang Challenge](https://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/)!
> 
> I was lucky enough to get to work with the wonderfully talented and generous [saintedsammy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsammy/pseuds/saintsammy), whose stunning tarot-inspired pieces sparked a lot of creative and experimental concepts for me! I hope that this fic was able to capture some of those sparks and vision.
> 
> You can find the artist's post [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12779022)\--thank you for being such an energizing and supportive collaborator!
> 
> Beta'd, as always, by the long-suffering [Rachel](http://betterwithsparkles.tumblr.com/).
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/), if you'd like.

 

Telepathy wasn’t one of Max’s natural gifts, but Sam Winchester tended to telegraph himself like a weirdly buff giraffe whenever he wasn’t bracketed by his brother. He was all arms and legs and chest and flannel and it worked, it did, but not for keeping a low profile.

Max supposed that he could probably skulk around when he needed to—when he made the effort—but he had only ever seen Sam long and broad and taking up space whether he wanted to or not. And a dump of a dive bar, even by hunter standards, off some county road just past Gillette, Wyoming on I-90 didn’t have all that much space to take up.

Max knew the second the crooked-paneled door swung open. Didn’t have to turn around, didn’t even have to twist an elbow off the bar counter to get half a decent look. He knew that it was Sam—just the same as he’d known it was Sam pulling up behind him at that gas station in Billings or tailing him after the black dog case he’d worked on the outskirts of the Crow reservation or sniffing around their safe house up in the Black Hills. Just the same as he’d known it’d been Sam calling them—calling _her_ —back about their mom out in Rock River.

Sure as his sister was a bundle of sticks stuffed into a skin suit, Max knew the scent of Sam on the air. It lingered, stuck around like a nasty cough and everything tasted a little bit different when he was there.

“Buy you a drink.” Max dipped a finger into his glass and dripped the tequila along the rim. “Unless you wanna keep pretending like you’re not following me?”

A stiff pause behind him, then six and a half feet of Winchester dropped itself onto the wobbling stool a few feet down the bar.

Max raised a hand for the short, blunt-looking woman behind the bar. “Two shots of Wild Turkey for me and the tall stranger.”

A slow nod, like she wasn’t even listening. Like people said all sorts of cryptic things in this bar and it didn’t even faze her anymore.

Sam wasn’t looking at him, and he was returning the favor.

Max swallowed down a mouthful; it stung bitter. “Where’s your angrier half?”

Sam snorted soft, folded his hands in his lap.

“Dean’s working on some projects back home.”

“That so?” The napkin under his drink had a ring soaked through it. “Nothing suspicious about that at all.”

Sam spun on the stool, one big hand white-knuckling the edge of the bar to keep it steady. He leaned in and Max tried to keep himself from tipping one way or the other.

“Why’d you do it, Max?” His voice was even, calm like a lockbox full of dynamite.

Max took another heavy sip. “Do what? That black dog in Wyola? I know she was an old lady but she was dropping bodies. Or do you mean that candy bar back at the Gas N’ Sip? Look, that kid on night shift was being a little shit and I didn’t want to break a twenty. Or maybe you mean that dishwasher at the Biggerson’s in Big Horn? I don’t know what to tell you about that one, man. Small town guys never wanna do last names, but he was hot so—”

“Cut the shit.” Sam’s jaw ticked and Max could totally see why Dean said his brother had a hell of a bitch face. “You know that I’m talking about Alicia.”

_Sticks for bones a heart ensewn and she’ll never be yours again._

“I know what you did. I saw her out in the garden at your safe house, so don’t try to lie to me about it.”

Max tilted his head but kept the rest of his body glued in place. “I’m not gonna lie to you. And I’m not gonna apologize either, so if that’s what you’ve been hoping to get by stalking me let me burst that creepy bubble right now.”

Sam blinked, watched him for a second with those eyes whose color Max could never quite pin down, then moved back. Sighed with a huff, like he’d been holding it in.

“I’m not asking you to apologize.” Those strange eyes dropped to Max’s kneecaps. “I just want to know why.”

Two shot glasses clacked down; whiskey sloshed over onto the wood grain that’d been scratched and stained to shit. A thousand shot glasses, a thousand empty nights rustling in and out of this place. A thousand sob stories, and each one of them a goddamn tragedy.

“You know why.” Max turned away again, reached for the sticky glass and threw it back in one go. His mom had taught him almost everything, but it’d been his dad who taught him how to drink.

“I do know.” Sam took the second glass, brought it to his lips but it came down still half-full. “But Max, what did it cost you? These things—these _deals_ —they always cost and they also go bad and it’s not worth i—”

“Don’t you _fucking_ dare.” Max snapped back, almost lunged for Sam’s throat. The power he’d damned himself with surged and clapped like thunder through all his joints and tendons. “ _You_ don’t get to lecture _me_ about deals going bad, about what is and isn’t worth it. If even half the rumors about you and Dean are true then you’ve screwed yourselves _and_ the world over for each other more times than Heaven and Hell combined. So don’t you try and convert me to a church you don’t even go to, Sam.”

Sam sat still, chewed at his mouth for a few seconds and then nodded like his strings had suddenly been pulled too tight.

“You’re right. I don’t have any room to talk here.” His fingers—long like cobwebs, like branches—splayed out flat on the bar. “I just…I didn’t want you to have to go through this too.”

Max shrugged. “Beats the alternative, doesn’t it?”

Sam snorted—a dry, unfunny kind of laugh—and swallowed the rest of his Wild Turkey down.

\---

Max had pushed his way out first—would always claim the privilege of being older—but only by a minute or so. Their mom used to say that there was no oldest, not really. That they’d come out with their cords tangled already grasping for each other and Max had refused to cry until his sister was in the world and breathing too.

“Do you two know—” Tasha Banes had teased whenever they complained about their Greek lessons. “—what Plato said about twin souls?”

Alicia would roll her eyes and Max would gag, ham it up for his sister.

“I’ve got a whole soul, thank you very much.” Alicia’s face always tied itself up in offense. “I don’t need anyone else trying to complete me.”

Then she would laugh and their mom would laugh and it would sound like glass chimes in a windstorm, echoing in all the parts of Max that were missing. All the parts that were aching for things that weren’t there, that couldn’t—shouldn’t—be there.

Max would close his eyes and hear that crackle filling him up, bursting out in the pops of fizzled spells.

“Focus, baby.” Tasha would rub his shaking hands between hers. “Find your source and feed the magic through it.”

Those hands, steady and warm. That voice weaving through the panic and fear. The pulse of his mother’s magic, the spark in the air after she’d cast a spell. Her eyes—bright and kind and clever—that his sister shared. His sister’s smile like the shimmer of sunset across the water, the scent of her—crisp and clean—that lingered in rooms even after she was gone.

Laughter like chimes, like glass chimes in the fingers of a dawn breeze.

“Whoa, Max—look!”

Max opened his eyes, hadn’t realized that he’d closed them. Their room was full of orbs, flickering and suspended, like fairy lights at a midsummer solstice party.

Alicia sat cross-legged on her bed staring up at them. She poked at the closest one; it fluttered but didn’t burst.

The glow—a rich purple that he must have inherited from his mom—traced the curve of Alicia’s cheeks, ran along the bridge of her nose and settled against her lips. Her eyes caught the reflection in dots that Max could connect between them.

She whispered out to the cool night air. “They’re beautiful.”

The orbs shuddered, pulsated in the darkness like they could hear the chimes too.

Like they knew what that melody meant long before Max could decode it.

\---

“So, that’s why you’ve been Cape Fear-ing me all across Montana? Just to disapprove of my life choices?” The tequila tasted sharper, cut harder, after their second shot.

Sam sputtered into the water he was nursing between drinks. “I wasn’t that bad, was I? I tried to keep my distance and not be weird about it. Not be too conspicuous, if I could help it.”

“Have you seen yourself?” Max dragged his eyes slow and purposeful from Sam’s steel-toed boots up to the prickly blush soaking along his ridiculous cheekbones and into the tips of his ears. “You’re hard to miss.”

Sam didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, so he took a thick gulp of water instead. Max watched his Adam’s apple bob with the effort.

Despite the nosiness, despite the uninvited investment in their lives, despite the lectures and the patronizing wrapped up in good intentions, despite the not-too-far-of-a stretch that—if the Winchester brothers had never ambled into their father’s wake—his mother and his sister might still be…

Despite all of that, Max liked Sam.

Max liked Sam’s awkwardness, liked the way that he fumbled and tripped over himself sometimes like it never occurred to him that a whole generation of hunters out there grew up on the Winchester legend. Max liked the way Sam talked to them, like he was genuinely happy to hear what other people had to say. Max liked the softness Sam had in him, liked the careful pause before he decided to do something, liked the way that he’d protect people without obligation or expectation. Max liked the kid-sibling sulk that Sam got sometimes when things didn’t go his way, liked the cleverness in his eyes that Max could almost see dots twinkling in.

And of course Sam was hot—a little lankier and younger than Max’s usual type, but he wasn’t blind. Even four layers of thrift store flannel and canvas couldn’t hide that, and when Sam came over at Asa’s and introduced himself Max had all but locked his jaw so it wouldn’t unhinge and clatter onto his lap. If Sam was some vegan café server or organic grocery clerk, he’d already be a fond memory.

But this was Sam Winchester—the man who soul-wrestled the devil and won—and sitting on that couch between him and Alicia, Max couldn’t shake the kickback of déjà vu.

And fuck him six ways to Sunday, but Max liked that too.

\---

“But Mom.” Alicia had spun the word out like sticky streaks of toffee. “Why do you have to go right _now_? It’s almost your birthday and, well, we weren’t going to do anything special but _if we were_ this would ruin those very hypothetical plans.”

“Sweetheart, I told you. Jody’s out on a hunt and she needs someone to check on some traces of spell work that one of her deputies ran into at a crime scene.” Tasha dropped her divination pendulum into her purse; it rattled against her keys.

“Is she with _them_? The Winchesters?” Alicia’s tone edged with awe; ever since the world had almost ended in an angelic death match a few years back, most hunter small talk included an update on the two brothers from Kansas who seemed to be right in the thick of all things apocalypse. Alicia had picked up the habit of talking about them like they weren’t just flesh and bones and blood and rock salt and Max always ground that under his back teeth.

Tasha shook her head, bent down to kiss Alicia against her hair. “I don’t know. But I’ll see if Jody can arrange an introduction sometime, if you want.”

“We don’t want.” Max huffed, crossed his arms when she pressed her lips to his cheek like 24 years old was too grown for a kiss from his mama. Like he’d have decades more to pretend to be embarrassed by her love.

“C’mon, Max.” Alicia had goaded him later—maybe over the tuna salad sandwiches Tasha had left in the fridge for them, or kicking around the porch watching the sky disintegrate along the horizon. “I know that you’re curious about them too.”

Max wasn’t curious. Everything he’d ever heard about Dean and Sam Winchester knotted him up, tied all his loose ends into a noose. Folks said about them what they’d say about Max if the tables were turned. If he’d ever done anything worth speculating about.

Folks said that they weren’t for communities or networks, that they kept to themselves because they thought that—whatever it was—they could do it better. Said that the only time you got a call from a Winchester was when some small beans case poked up and they were too busy chasing demon generals or alphas or archangels to handle it. Said that this wasn’t a job to them, wasn’t even a mission—it was their whole life. Every part of the buffalo was hunting because they had nothing else worth living for, except each other.

After a few beers, folks started saying other things too. Said their dad did a number on them, that no one would’ve grown up normal with that. Said that they’d always been odd, from way back when John Winchester used to pack them into the back of his muscle car for group hunts and then leave them at some by-the-hour dump. A cocky, empty-smiled boy and his shy, rattle-angry little brother—both too old for their ages, frayed seams and patched-up tears running up and down their faded clothes.

When it was close to last call and the stragglers had gotten sloppy drunk and gossipy, the rumors would turn sour. Folks muttered and raised their eyebrows and left their implications hanging. Said that those boys had spent too many nights together alone, spent too many hours on the road without a home except the museum piece their dad had left them and the motel rooms they shared along the way. Said that they’d never learned how to be around other people, never learned how to let other people be around them, and now they didn’t want it. Said that they’d left girls and dogs and picket fences for crumbling safe houses and monsters, said that they’d both gone to hell screaming the other one’s name.

Folks said that they always stood too close, always crammed into the same space, always brushed hands and shot a dozen faces between them and had whole arguments without saying a word. Said that they couldn’t ever be comfortably apart, that even in the middle of heated conversations they’d keep scanning the room until they found each other. Said that they couldn’t put their finger on it, that it was a gut instinct, that there wasn’t any proof and that anyway—whatever else the Winchesters might be—they were damn good hunters and that’s what mattered.

Alicia shoved his shoulder sweet and playful and no, Max wasn’t curious about the Winchesters because—sure as he knew himself—he already knew them.

\---

“Dean’s not working on a project.” Sam offered it slow and slurred, staring down at the pile of peanut shells he’d collected in front of him. “He thinks I’m doing some research at a special collections library in Fargo.”

Max sucked on a stale maraschino cherry, bit at its stew. “Yeah?”

“There isn’t even a special collections library in Fargo.” His tone cut half-amused, half-miserable like he’d told an awful joke and regretted it immediately. “But I didn’t want him asking questions about this, just in case my hunch was right—which it was. You’d much rather have me lecturing you about this than him, believe me.”

“Hm.” Max flicked the stem onto the floor. “Not like Dean ever did something stupid for someone he loved before, right?”

“That’s—” Sam flared up and then sloshed back onto the stool. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure it wasn’t.”

And the way Sam’s eyebrows tugged down, the pout that twisted in the corners of his mouth, smacked Max across the face with the echo of every doe-eyed, wheedling plea that Alicia had used against him over the years. He wanted to punch Sam in the arm, harder than necessary or roll his eyes and cut him off with the bartender or grab him by the collar and—

“But you’re right.” Max winked, kept his hands to himself for now. “I’d much rather have you tailing me than Dean. I mean, I wouldn’t say no to him if he _asked_ but…”

Sam choked on nothing, knocked over the pile and scattered the shells. “I don’t think Dean would…well, I mean…I guess I couldn’t say for sure…”

Max chuckled, patted the end of Sam’s thigh and let his hand overstay its welcome. “Relax, Sam. I’m not going to seduce your brother.”

Sam’s eyes darted; his blunt nails tapped out half a rhythm against the counter. “Pretty sure that Dean would be the one seducing, if he had any say in it.”

“Either way.” Max squeezed and felt the taunt, lean muscle under Sam’s over-worn jeans. “Why would I go after Dean Winchester, when I could be seducing Sam?”

\---

Max liked boys, had liked boys since he could remember liking anyone. He liked how they were loud and rough and full of cracks that they were always trying to cover with the shellac of manliness—whatever that was. He liked how they were simple to get, checkers not chess, and how once you got them everything else was usually a pretty easy sell. He liked the way they went small and warm in those secret moments when the world stopped telling them how to exist, when they didn’t have to prove themselves to some always-absent male god. He liked that he and boys—men—understood each other, felt on the same spectrum and that, even when they were toying with each other, it was always fun.

He’d had a few maybe-boyfriends over the years, had the space to do it since their mom had kept them mostly in one place. He’d had some perfect teenage crushes, some itchy awkward firsts in the back of pickup trucks and behind the varsity cheering section of the bleachers. He’d had some numbers slid to him on napkins and some quick and dirty flings and even a bruised heart or two.

But mostly he’d tried to keep it simple, keep most of his strings to himself. Told himself that bringing a civilian into the fold never went down clean and besides, he wasn’t looking for forever. Wasn’t looking for matching rings and monogrammed towels and a hypoallergenic pet. He already had responsibilities, already had things in his life that he had to be there for in the long run, already had—

Alicia dated less than him, liked to accuse him of driving potential anyones away with his glares and his speeches about shotguns and—if the person was particularly unacceptable—a few relatively harmless magic tricks. She’d shove back at him, demand to know:

“What was wrong with that one?”

And he’d shrug, like it was the silliest question in the world. Because what was wrong with them, any of them? Sure, one or two had been a little weasely and there had been a few others who were duller than a box of rocks but they’d all been harmless—more or less. Some of them had even been charming, kind and smart and if it’d been Max instead of Alicia there wouldn’t have ever been any questions about suitability.

The truth was, it’d always be a trick question. Because what was wrong with them could never be fixed; what was wrong with _him_ could never be fixed. And she didn’t deserve to have to stay home—didn’t deserve to not get to have her own firsts and maybes and almosts—so nine times out of ten he’d relent, back off and apologize and not start moping until she was out the door.

In those handful of times when she’d suggest they just go—to the movies, to dinner, to the dance—together, he would swallow down the choke of satisfaction. Tamp down the surge of possessiveness; Alicia didn’t belong to him, she didn’t, she _didn’t_.

Max liked boys, had liked boys since he could remember liking anyone, but Alicia…

“What’s wrong with that one?”

Max would say: “Nothing” and it would mean _they’re not me_.

\---

It was closing time, had been for about ten minutes, but it didn’t seem like Sam was ready to leave. Max had been working his best lines—poking with jokes and flirty compliments and his hand inching up that long thigh—but Sam had gone cagey, laced up some of his easy sweetness as the bar started clearing out.

“I don’t know if you should be driving.” Sam nodded towards the pool of bottles between them; most of them were from Max. “You had a lot.”

Max scoffed, cracked out his back. “Thanks for the concern, but I can hold my copious amounts of cheap beer and liquor just as well as the next hunter.”

Sam chewed at his bottom lip, studied the bottles like he was trying to calculate the total alcohol content, and Max seized the gap.

“Of course, you can always take me back to the motel, if you’re worried about it.” He leaned in, breath damp against Sam’s ear. “Just to be safe.”

“I…um…” Sam stuttered, spun too quickly and the stood rocked under him. “Dean doesn’t know I’m here.”

Max’s eyebrows tied high. “So? Do you keep track of each other’s hook-ups or something?”

“No.” Sam’s eyes darted towards his phone, screen down on the counter. “Or, yeah. Kind of. For—for safety.”

“Sure.” Max wanted to goad him, wanted to tease but he knew that strange flutter of panic at the thought of not knowing what—and with who—his sibling might be doing something. “Look, Sam, you don’t have to—we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Or if you’re not into it, or me, or if this is the first time—”

“It’s not.” Sam cut in, abrupt like he wanted to prove something. “And I am. Into it, or you, or whatever. It’s just…I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. About me, about this. I’m…I’m not really good with one-night stands.”

Max smiled, couldn’t help it. Damn if this big, bad Winchester wasn’t just a sloppy mess like the rest of them.

“You really aren’t. But that’s okay—this doesn’t need to be anything more than tonight, just two friends helping each other out in a lonely world. I won’t start sending you texts with heart emojis, I promise.”

Sam snorted, tipped forward half an inch. “I just…I come with a lot of weird baggage, even if it’s just for one night.”

Max smirked and it tasted bitter. “Don’t we all.”

The bartender was wiping down glasses slow and tossing impatient glances their way, so Max left an extra twenty in their pile of crumbled bills. He dropped rough into the front seat of his Jeep; his guts were jittery and sloshy and it was probably a good thing that his motel was less than half a mile down the road. His ears buzzed, adrenaline and nerves and maybe a little bit of pride at getting a Winchester back to his room, and his fingers shook against the key in the lock as Sam pulled into the parking lot behind him.

When he closed the door, Sam stood still in the middle of the room like he was waiting to be appraised. To be judged.

It started like an engine turning over, took a few tries to get it right. Sam pushed hard then fumbled back, aggressive then unsure. He stumbled over himself and looked up at Max for reassurance like the little brother that he was.

“Is this okay?”

Max moaned low, dug his fingers into Sam’s hair. His hips stuttered.

“It’s good, Sam.”

“Sammy.” His voice was muffled, raspy at the edges. “Call me Sammy.”

His body—his impossibly long body—fluttered under Max’s palms, sweat and a patchwork of scars over scars and the faint smell of leather and late summer leaves.

He whispered into their shared darkness. “It’s really good, Sammy.”

\---

Alicia had wanted a garden but their safe house didn’t have much cover from the road. It was an old service lane and there wasn’t another inhabited house for ten miles in either direction, but Max still didn’t want to chance it. He’d said it was too dangerous and she hadn’t fought him on it, hadn’t ignored his warnings all together and just done what she wanted to like she used to before…

So he’d compromised, given her free reign of the backyard and even made a few mulch runs into Rapid City for it. She’d spend hours out there—planting and weeding and pruning—and she’d always said that she didn’t have magic but by the time June snaked in their little patch of arid earth was in an odd, chaotic sort of bloom.

Max stood in the shadow of the house and traced the arc of Alicia’s back as she knelt next to a plot, looked for juts or creaks that hadn’t been there before he’d left.

“I thought you weren’t going to be back until Wednesday.” She didn’t turn around, didn’t stop digging. Max wondered if maybe she felt it too, the way the weight of the air shifted when they weren’t together.

“The job finished early. It ended up being a ghost, not a revenant, so it was pretty easy to wrap up.” He reached into his pocket and toyed with the drawstrings on a little velvet bag, dusty from the ride. “Hey, I picked up something for you in Onida.”

She pushed off her knees and wiped her hands against her jeans. He dropped the bag into her open palm and watched her face as she pulled out the gold chain. She tapped at the pendant, examined it like she didn’t know what it was exactly.

“Here—it’s a locket.” Max snapped it open with his fingernails. “It’s got Mom on one side and you and me on the other.”

“Oh.” Alicia ran a finger across the glass, lingered on their mother’s face.

Max threaded his fingers through the matching chain around his neck. “I’ve got one too. I just thought…I thought it would be nice, to have something to remember her with.”

“Yeah.” She looked up, eyes wet and Max could almost forget that her tears weren’t real anymore, that she had nothing to cry from now. “Thanks.”

He reached out to wipe her eyes dry but stopped, unclasped her necklace instead and hooked it under her curls. She wound her arms around his waist, burrowed into his chest and she was so warm, so alive that it didn’t matter what kept her heart beating so long as it did.

He glanced at the fresh-turned soil behind her. “I thought those were dead.”

She followed his gaze to the cluster of tall stalks with wide pink flowers at the top.

“They die and bloom again. That’s where they get their name from—resurrection lilies.” Her smile was small, shy. “I planted them for you, so that no matter what happens out there you’ll always come back to me.”

“Alicia.” He cupped her cheeks in his hands, rubbed his thumb along the curve of her nose. She blinked, held her breath, and it could be so easy. He could lean down soft and slow and it could be so natural, so normal, so right and he could. He could—

He pressed his lips to her forehead; she smelled like dirt and bark and ripe-green grass. He closed his eyes and whispered damp against it.

“For us. So we’ll always come back to each other.”

\---

When it was done—when they lay skin to skin, sticky and panting—Max offered Sam an out. Most hunters woke up early and the sun would be out in a few hours and it’d be a tight squeeze with both of them trying to sleep on one bed anyway.

“You don’t have to stay, you know.” Max kicked his scattered clothes into the corner next to his bag. “Not that I’m kicking you out. I just don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated or something. I’m not gonna cry myself to sleep if you leave.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence, but I’m a commit-to-the-whole-night-of-a-one-night-stand kind of person.” Sam sat up and started folding his discarded shirts. “And, um, I also didn’t rent another room so…”

Max laughed at that, loud and sudden like it’d been punched out of him. “That’s fair.”

He peed and brushed his teeth and then decided, fuck it, he’d shower in the morning. The sheets were already ruined.

Sam set himself up rigid along the edge of the bed, like he was afraid to take up any more room.

Max pinched at his elbow. “You gonna sleep like you’re in a coffin?”

Sam squirmed away from his fingers. “Sorry, I haven’t slept with someone other than—um, I’m not used to sharing a bed.”

He shifted, turned so his back was angled half-towards Max and Max took that as an invitation, a request. He pulled Sam in—back tucked into his chest—and slung an arm low, just above Sam’s hip. Everything was snap-tense for a second and then Sam exhaled, pressed into Max and sandwiched his pillow under his head.

The silence stretched on for so long that Max thought Sam had fallen asleep, began to nod off himself.

“I’m so—things are so fucked up. Have always been so fucked up.” Sam’s voice was thin, tiny in the blackness around them. “I’m sorry if I made things weird.”

“We’re all fucked up, Sam.” Max scraped a thumbnail across Sam’s hipbone. “But your fucked up and my fucked up—they kind of work together, you know?”

“Yeah.” Sam curled in a little tighter against himself. “We’re like an unraveled tangle of yarn, Dean and I, and we always have been. It’s not…I know that it’s not normal, how we feel about each other. Or at least, how I feel about him. But I don’t know how to be without him, not anymore. And I don’t want to—I _won’t_ be without him, and that’s destroyed so many lives—yours included. And I’m sorry, I am, but I don’t regret it. I’d destroy a thousand worlds for Dean if I had to, even if I pretend like I wouldn’t, and I just…I just don’t know how….”

“Me either.” Max brushed Sam’s hair, let it fan out against the pillow. “I don’t know how to not love like that. Alicia’s not the whole world, but she’s every part of it that matters to me. That’s why I did it, because if she’s not here then why am I?”

Sam shuddered, little hiccups and heavy-drawn breaths and Max reached up to wipe his eyes dry.

“Do you think it’ll ever be enough?” Sam murmured, tone soaked and wrung out.

Max paused for a beat. “I don’t know. Maybe not—but at least we’ve got them, alive and in our lives. And each other.”

He leaned in, kissed dry and light against the back of Sam’s neck and told himself that it—everything lost, everything kept, everything gained—was worth it.

“At least we’re not alone.”

 

  



End file.
